Saturday 20 May 2017

Alien Covenant: Knowing Your Creator.

'Alien: Covenant' is the second prequel to the 'Alien' franchise.  The sequel to 'Prometheus', Ridley Scott's flirtation with big philosophical ideas, which seemed to alienate quite a few viewers (please forgive the intentional pun).

This instalment opens with a fascinating dialogue between David, the synthetic and his creator, Peter Weyland in a minimalist space that just happens to contain several cultural artifacts, most notably, a Steinway piano and Michaelangelo's 'David', which the synthetic calls himself after the sculptural masterpiece.  David views himself as perfect and indeed, on one level he is.  Tellingly, the most significant and potent idea that thematically holds the film structure together is the fact that David knows who his creator is, his inventor doesn't (okay, Peter Weyland knows who his parents are but ultimately, where did the human race come from?).  Philosophically, this puts the human race at a disadvantage.  If we do not know where we come from originally, how can we know where we are going and if the decisions we are making are reasonable or even necessary?

David is the perfect creation, he learns can create and sees a bigger picture.  The only problem is the fact that he is the only one who understands how perfect he is.  He makes mistakes (at one point in the film, he mistakes the author of 'Ozymandias', believing it to have been written by Byron.  The poem was written by Shelley) but cannot perceive his mistakes.

Later in the film, Walter who is one of the series of synthetics who succeeded David's model describes how he cannot create.  The later models are less self-aware, more compliant.  In one particularly moving scene, David helps Walter to learn to play the recorder.  He holds down the notes and gets Walter to blow.

Truly, the most engaging aspects of the film are the characters of David and Walter and the philosophical explorations of creation, survival and reproduction.

I am sure that somewhere within the film's narrative, I lost my way because from a Darwinist perspective, I am certain that the pathogen based method of reproduction  i.e. entering the host, gestating and then materialising as an alien form is far more effective than David's later efforts as scientist or midwife when he uses the egg/Facehugger to host method which leads to the alien form (pretty much the Giger designed Xenomorph, we are used to from the original 'Alien').  Indeed, when we examine this reproductive model, it is as fundamentally flawed as human sexual intercourse, subject as it is to the risk of infection and moments of vulnerability.  Admittedly, the end alien form from this process seems stronger and more perfectly formed than the slightly insipid forms that are the result of the pathogen method of reproduction.

The human beings in the film are suitably naive, blindly following the synthetics when they would be wiser to let them alone.  But being led is a necessary side effect of the human condition when your existence is driven by ill defined goals and science has supplanted the need for God, all that the human race can do is follow binary instructions in the hope that salvation can be located somewhere else.  The fact that the ship is called 'Covenant' with its Biblical allusions could be coincidental within the context of the film.  Who is the covenant with?  The Covenant as a ship is clearly an Ark designed to help the human race begin again elsewhere, full of a number of embryos as well as adult passengers.  What has the human race done to the Earth to necessitate the need to escape and start again or else is this simply another case of blatant expansionism?  Imperialism masked as survivalism?

If 'Alien: Covenant' tells us anything, it isn't solely do not mess with nature; its lessons are more tightly immersed in notions of belief and love.  Aliens do not seem to love, but they do prolifically reproduce.  Once they exhaust their supply of host bodies, the species remains somewhat dormant. The human race can only survive if they do not exhaust their resources through reproduction.  If ever there were a film that graphically depicts the dangers of over population amidst diminishing resources, this is it.

                                                                          Barry Watt - 14th May 2017.

Afterword.

'Alien: Covenant' is currently still doing the rounds of many cinemas.  I recommend it.  Hopefully, Ridley Scott won't release a 'Director's Cut' in six months.  All characters and plot elements are mentioned to illustrate my feelings and arguments.  The characters and plot elements are copyright to the film companies and filmmakers involved with the film.

'Prometheus' is available on DVD (20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) and should probably be viewed before seeing 'Alien: Covenant'.

Steinway & Sons make amazing pianos that are most regularly seen in concert halls owing to their cost.

https://www.steinway.com/pianos/steinway/grand

Michaelangelo's 'David' seriously blows your mind if you get to see it outside of a postcard.  It's enormous and visually astounding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_(Michelangelo)

'Ozymandias' was a sonnet written by Percy Bysshe Shelley in around 1817:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozymandias

Lord Byron was a poet and very interesting gentlemen with many appetites:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Byron

H.R. Giger was an artist and he played an important role in the special effects team on 'Alien' and essentially designed the Xenomorph and other alien forms including the Facehuggers, we know and love from the film.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._R._Giger

The 'Alien' films are all worth seeing and they are all available on DVD.

                                                                                                                                 BW



                                                                   

Sunday 19 March 2017

On Maps - The Art of Locating Yourself and Others, on Finding What's There and What Isn't.

Some time ago, I visited the 'Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing The Line' exhibition at the British Library.  The exhibition focused on maps from the 20th century.  A century rife with creation, war and social upheaval.  I guess you could say the same about any epoch where humanity is concerned, yet the development of technology and new forms of engineering did radically alter peoples' lives and made the need to locate oneself more pressing.

In the exhibition, the maps on offer illustrated many interesting facts about the concept of maps. They can be used to illustrate spatial scale, which is clearly of unique importance during times of war, but they can also break down the social make-up of a community.  One of the most striking maps on offer was a small cut-up map which had been attached to a rifle in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, marking up the roads whose inhabitants were primarily Catholic and those roads where the residents were Protestants. This brutally brought home the point that maps are not always neutral, they have agendas.  In this case, a soldier would refer to her/his rifle to get a sense of bearing and to learn whether s/he would soon be entering a 'hostile' area.

When maps were in their formative stages; the days when explorers were still finding and conquering new areas, many sections of the maps were marked with expressions such as 'uncharted territory'. The unknown has always been a subject that piques the interest and/or paradoxically, scares the life out of people.

Within the exhibition, the maps of the fictional worlds of the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien were particularly interesting, his map of Middle Earth enabled him to think in terms of geographical distance between places, which is a primary feature of maps.  Scale informs our understanding of how long it will take us to get from one place to another.  Indeed, Tolkien apparently referred to his map quite a bit as a way of getting to grips with narrative events and getting characters around his world.

The map of Disneyland, which was also on display further emphasised how the imaginary needs to be structured for people to locate themselves.  Although, Disneyland is a real place, the concept behind it clearly stems from the world of the imagination.  I can imagine Walt Disney in an almost stream of consciousness state defining the territories that children of all ages would be traversing, possibly for centuries to come.

I have always had a liking for the Situationists and also the psychogeographers, those people who play with location, memory and emotion.  The many journeys undertaken by those explorers who haphazardly stumble upon new locations by applying the wrong city map to the wrong city, using this as a starting point for bizarre adventures.

This ties neatly in to those of us who get lost regularly and for whom maps are merely a guide.  I will follow a map for awhile, get disorientated and end up slightly deviating from my original course, before retracing my steps.  Urban and city planning is quite often the cause for so many people losing themselves and others in sprawling metropolises that are never totally completed.  In particular, London gradually encroaches upon an ever increasing space.  The 'Green Belt' tightens.  The only place I have ever comfortably negotiated is Barcelona with its grid like street structures, providing long roads with the same names and intersection roads.  The majority of the roads are quite straight.

Compare this with the area around the City of London and marvel that anyone ever finds what they are looking for.  I love the Barbican but even the City of London Corporation (and anyone else responsible for managing the area) are aware of how hard it can be to find the main Barbican Centre and other locations, so many signs and indeed, markings on the walkways in the main Barbican Estate help with the act of direction.

As a concluding point, maps and topographies are not always used to define space but also ideas. This was touched on above with the work of the psychogeographers with their interest in histories, both real and imagined.  The myths that define a culture.  The 'Sweeney Todds' and 'Spring-Heeled Jacks' who occupy a bizarre intersection point between the imagined and the real.  Does the imagined become real when enough people believe in the myth?  Think also of the concept of 'mind maps', those squares and rectangles etc into which we can break up the components of an essay or project or even our lives..  Write 'What makes me happy?' in a box in the centre of a page of A4 paper and send spidery tendrils out to other boxes.  Redefine your personal perimeters.  Maps and topographies are about establishing order or the pretence of order.

By now, as I set off on a new journey, |I implore you all to look at the maps that surround us with new eyes.  One of my favourite maps appears on the cover of Radiohead's album, 'Hail To The Thief''.  A composition called 'Pacific Coast' by Stanley Donwood.  The artist used a map of Hollywood and littered the map with words and phrases he saw as he gazed upon the advertising that he saw around him in Los Angeles.  When viewed it breaks down human preoccupations and emotional states etc, into fragments and buzzwords.  The breakdown leading to the commencement of a new journey, one that starts from within, a questioning of needs and let's all be perfectly honest, all good and bad journeys begin within.

                                                                                               Barry Watt - 18th March 2017.

Afterword.

The 'Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line' exhibition at the British Library has sadly finished but it lives on in my mind and I recommend future exhibitions at the British Library to you:

https://www.bl.uk/whats-on

J.R.R. Tolkien was responsible for many renowned works of fantasy fiction, most notably, 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' published by many publishers over the years including Harper Collins.  The detail concerning Tolkien cross-referencing his map in order to keep on top of his narratives and the progression of his characters, I read at the British Library.

Disneyland is the trademark of Disney and my opinions of Disneyland and its creation are my own. Although, I will add that Walt Disney was a genius in my opinion.  After all, his legacy continues to grow.

https://disneyland.disney.go.com/

For more on the Situationists, please take a look at the following Wikipedia entry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

To explore the ever growing and exciting world of the psychogeographers, go out of your front door and walk the wrong way with a sense of incoherent purpose but seriously, there are as many ways of experiencing psychogeography as living your life but for a basic rundown of the key figures (at least, they key literary and I guess academic figures etc), take a look at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography

The Barbican Centre is probably one of the most culturally important establishments.  Here's their website:

http://www.barbican.org.uk/

For more on the horrors of 'Sweeney Todd', please see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Todd

If you want to read more about 'Spring-Heeled Jack' (he truly got around as he was reportedly spotted all around the UK at various points):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-heeled_Jack

Radiohead and 'Hail To The Thief', one of their albums, are both well worth exploring:

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/

'Pacific Coast' by Stanley Donwood can be viewed here with an interesting article:

http://theconversation.com/stanley-donwood-radiohead-and-the-power-of-musical-artwork-41683

                                                                                                                            B.W.






Friday 3 March 2017

Fifty Shades Darker - On Apple and Vanilla Sex.

I don't know why but I just felt that I should continue my short series of blogs based on the 'Fifty Shade' series.  As you know, I have read the books and I saw the first film, so with some trepidation I went to see the second film a few weeks ago.

'Fifty Shades Darker' continues where the previous film left off and basically sees the relationship between Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele resume but without the rules and contracts that have informed his previous relationships.  His predilection for control based relationships with more than a slight hint of sadism connected to them shunted to one side, so that he can develop a meaningful relationship with Ana.  Once again, the film slightly explores Christian Grey's troubled upbringing. As the film opens, we are privy to Christian Grey's nightmare concerning his biological mother as she is seemingly being abused in the distance by a man who comes into his bedroom and catches Christian Grey hiding beneath his bed.

I am not going to give you a full synopsis of the film as it is a fairly faithful adaptation of the second book in the 'Fifty Shades Trilogy'.  But I will highlight some aspects of the film that either intrigued or dissatisfied me.  Let's start with the most obvious point, for a film that supposedly focuses upon the world of S and M and sexual practices in general, there is very little sex in the film.  Now whether you see this as a good or bad thing is largely down to how you feel about cinematic depictions of sex. If the sexual acts are over done, the flow of a film's narrative can be inhibited.  In fact, I can only think of a handful of films where depictions of sexual acts do not disturb the film's narrative and are indeed, integral to the development of character and plot.  'Don't Look Now' is one such film.  As Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie's characters make love, you can see how their relationship has changed following the death of their young daughter.  There is a sense of pathos about their lovemaking.  In 'Fifty Shades Darker', the sex becomes as Ana wishes very 'vanilla'.  Indeed, in one scene, she visually illustrates where she sees their love life going by holding up a tub of Ben and Jerry's Vanilla ice cream.

Within this film, 'Vanilla sex' is pretty much the order of the day.  It's largely a consensual couple making love in the missionary position.  As the film goes on, Ana becomes more experimental and begins to use the equipment in the Red Room as she becomes more interested in the practical application of bondage.  Also the infamous 'silver balls' are inserted by Christian Grey at one point in the narrative.  These I suppose provide stimulation through movement for Ana, although any pleasure she experiences is not always apparent from the acting of Dakota Johnson (or to give her justice from the script and direction).  Something that the book and film both avoid properly exploring is the high level of dependency that can be implicit within sado masochistic relationships.  Within the book and film, one of Christian Grey's previous submissives, Leila Williams pursues Ana and Christian, which leads to an eventual confrontation, in which Christian saves the day.  This is an element of both the film and book that could have been better developed.  Although, maybe I am trying too hard to squeeze some kind of psychosexual analysis out of a series that is more concerned with only slightly pulling back the curtains on a world that the author wishes us to see but not fully understand?  E.L. James' interest is in the characters of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele, the other characters do not feel as developed.

My most fundamental issue with this film is the product placement.  Apple once again dominates and also as suggested earlier, Ben and Jerry ice cream.  I long for the day when a character doesn't pull out a laptop which lights up the Apple logo.  It makes me want to understand more concerning how corporate companies are involved in the production of these films, do they invest money or simply offer their goods, if they are promised that their products will be featured prominently throughout the running time of a film?

To close, the film as a whole feels quite wholesome, which may be the harshest thing I can say about it.  If anything, the sexual acts portrayed in this film are slightly more restrained than in the previous film.  What intrigues me is the fact that this film was directed by James Foley with some involvement from E.L. James.  I wonder how different the film may have been if directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, the director of the first film?  Although, ultimately, the source material determines how the narrative progresses.  I respect that the novels were written in the first place but just wish that the author had focused more on the BDSM world, which seemed to loosely inspire them.  Sex may sell books but very few books can successfully offer an erotic world that empowers both women and men or indeed, explore sexuality in its myriad forms.

                                                                                        Barry Watt - 3rd March 2017.  

Afterword

The 'Fifty Shades Trilogy' consists of 'Fifty Shades of Grey', 'Fifty Shades Darker' and 'Fifty Shades Freed'.  They are written by E.L. James and they are published by Arrow.

'Don't Look Now' is based on the short story by Daphne du Maurier and the film was released in 1973 and is available on DVD from Optimum Home Entertainment.  It's still one of the most intelligent films about the bereavement process, I have yet to see.

'Ben and Jerry's' are an ice cream company that make pretty good ice cream:

http://www.benjerry.co.uk/

Apple (not to be confused with the other Apple company with connections to the band, The Beatles) are a major corporation that make electrical goods that everyone seems to want.  Their website is below:

www.apple.com

                                                                                                                                      BW